Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Are Primary Care Physicians "Loss Leaders" or "Marketing Dupes"?
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Old 08-24-2025, 06:59 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Rainger99 View Post
That seems unfair to the patients. When I go to a doctor I want to see a doctor, not a PA or an NP.

And wouldn’t that make TVH more profitable? Hire some doctors and lots of PAs and NPs and direct a lot of your patients to the PA or NP.

Do you have a ballpark idea what the difference is in pay between a doctor and a PA or an NP? I doubt if they get 85% of a doctor’s pay.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BrianL99 View Post
I suspected that and Chat GPT agrees with you! .

So with PA/NP's, the provider is making about 30% or so? (I'm assuming PA/NP salaries are about 60% of an MD's salary?).

How does a medical practice pay for admin, overhead & profit, if "office visits" barely break even?

(Also curious ... most studies I've seen, conclude that "outcomes" are comparable between Dr care & PA/NP care. True?)
There's a lot there to respond to, so here's the highlights:

10 years ago our nurse practitioners, between salary bonus and benefits, had a compensation package of about $130,000. And no, that is not 85% of a physician's income. We made minimal "profit" on our NPs.

I don't know where that "break even" idea came from. Primary care practices generally run at about 55% overhead, we were a bit better at 47% overhead. So individually we kept about $53K out of every $100K billed and collected (another issue). But out of that we then individually paid malpractice insurance, disability insurance, overhead insurance and taxes. So on average, a primary care physician was left with 19 cents on every dollar collected.

So on average, when you see Dr. "X" billed out $1 million and are "shocked", that translates to $900K collected, $405K after overhead and about $275K after expenses---with no benefits and no pension for retirement. This comes out to less total compensation than a police sergeant married to a high school guidance counselor in a medium sized town.